The Fix-It
by mosylu
Summary: He was supposed to make up for the son his parents lost. Nobody ever told him this.
(A/N): I wrote this when I first heard about Rupture turning up in 2.20. Even at the time I figured it would be Dante, not Armando, who's Dante and Cisco's older brother in the comics. But hey, I really liked this idea.

* * *

When Paulina Ramon got pregnant, somebody said it first. "Well, that's good. This will be a replacement for the one she lost."

When it got back to her, she just nodded numbly. Even a year ago, she would have screamed that nobody could replace her Armandito, her first born, the charming, rough-and-tumble little boy who was already the star of every sports team he joined.

But by now it had been two years since he'd disappeared. Dante no longer asked where his big brother was. Fernando never spoke about him. It had been months since they'd gotten even the faintest wild-goose chase lead. And she couldn't look at the pictures anymore.

There was a hole dug deep inside her, a yawning emptiness with _Armando Francisco Ramon_ carved into its walls.

Maybe this baby would fill it.

* * *

Cisco never knew about Armando. The pictures were put away long before he could walk, and anybody who ever mentioned it in front of him was so quickly and thoroughly shushed that by the time he was old enough to understand what they were saying, they were no longer saying it.

But Armando haunted him, even if he didn't know who or why.

The first thing that ever told him he wasn't good enough was the disappointment in his papi's eyes after the soccer tryouts. He was the first kid cut from the team, once he got old enough that there were try-outs and not a happy scramble of gap-toothed kids tripping over each other all up and down the field.

Cisco had tried out because he'd always done soccer. He didn't think much of it one way or the other, because hey, an ironclad excuse to run around shrieking like a maniac, plus Capri Suns after. Anyway, his parents signed him up and drove him and like most little kids, he was just along for the ride that the grown-ups steered.

When the coach said his name first, he shrugged, grabbed another Capri Sun just because, and ambled off the field, already planning to ask his pop if they could start going to the public library on Wednesday afternoons instead. His buddy Chirag from school had said they had computer club for kids and you got extra time and no shushing and no adults glaring because you'd started bouncing up and down in your chair because holy! wow! the Hubble! telescope!

But his pop stormed over to the coach and started yelling, and Cisco went from cheerful acceptance to sitting hunched up on the bleachers, his tiny, skinny body folded around his knotted stomach, sucking on the Capri Sun so he wouldn't cry tears of a humiliation he didn't completely understand.

The ride home was very, very long, and at home, the silence after his mama's shriek of, _"Cut?"_ was longer.

He tried to do things that would make them proud. He loved school, he loved knowing things, and he brought home straight A's for first, second, and third grade. Almost straight A's. The B's and C's in phys ed were all they seemed to see.

He tried to do the sports they suggested. He tried out for soccer two more times before the coach wouldn't sign him up anymore - "Son, do you _really_ want to do this?" "No, coach. Thank you, coach," and he bolted out of the rec center before his father could come inside.

He tried baseball, he tried football, he even tried swimming and running. But he hated them. He hated the team sports where everybody groaned at his mistakes and blamed losses on him. He hated the racing sports because what was the point? You went back and forth or round and round, and _Dios mio_ , why would you want to be the fastest anyway? It was way more fun to amble along, stopping to examine the fall leaves all over the ground and the awesome bugs underneath, or figure out how deep you could dive and enjoy the cool pressure of the depths and the slow, warped, bubbly noises of the other people in the water.

By the end of third grade, he stopped trying to buy their approval with grades. He still got okay report cards, B's and C's in math and science and social studies to go along with his phys ed grades, but he spent most of his time drawing elaborate machines in his notebooks instead of taking notes or participating in class. The tests saved his tail. He had a good memory. He tested well.

He did win the science fair that year, to his teachers' astonishment. They were more astonished that his parents didn't turn up.

He hadn't told them.

Anyway, that was when Dante started to do really well with his music. He'd always been good, but now there were solo performances and special lessons and people coming to the house to listen and say things like _Such potential. A prodigy._

While he would later come to resent it, Cisco floated along in his fourth-grade year in a haze of cool relief that his parents' focus was finally, finally off him and now he had nothing to live up to.

But he still had to buzz-cut his hair.

(Armando had never worn it any other way.)

He had to eat carrot cake on his birthday.

(Armando had smashed carrot cake all over his own face on his first birthday and it was proclaimed his favorite. Cisco refused to touch carrot cake, or for that matter carrots, at any other time.)

And after a particularly ugly scene his freshman year of high school, he had to pretend he only liked girls. He told his folks that kissing the neighbor boy had been on a bet, a dare, and he pretended he'd hated it when the truth was that Angelo Ybarra's kiss had lit him up like a pinball machine.

(Armando would totally, definitely have been 100% straight and a complete ladies' man; the fact that he'd been _eight_ didn't really cross Fernando or Paulina's minds.)

When he moved out of the house, Cisco felt like a lifetime of shackles had fallen off his wrists. He didn't have a name for it, but he sure as hell felt it.

He started growing his hair out right away.

* * *

Honestly, Cisco had been holding his own until Rupture grabbed his jacket and said, "Your name, worm - "

He said, "Vibe - " and got shaken like a puppy.

"Your real name."

For some reason, he said, "Francisco Armando Ramon, and watch the jacket, dicksmack." Okay, adding the last part was no great mystery.

Rupture dropped him five feet onto a pile of debris and snarled, _"They replaced me?"_

"What?" he asked, holding his ankle, gritting his teeth. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Ask them," Rupture snarled, pointing his giant scythe. (Okayyyyyyyy, compensating much?) "Ask Paulina and Fernando Ramon who Armando was." He swiped the scythe through the air and stepped through the breach because oh my god, _drama queen._

Once he got over the shock of an interdimensional breach-cutting supervillain knowing his parents' names, Cisco actually did it. He'd growled and snarled and muttered to himself the whole way there, but -

 _He'd known their names._

Cisco limped in the front door, his nose still bleeding, dust still covering his wicked awesome jacket, and said, "Who's Armando?"

He listened to the story of a rough, tough, athletic big brother who'd vanished without a trace and everything that had never made sense about his childhood finally did.

* * *

He went back to Star Labs and spent sixteen hours studying the traffic cam footage of their fight, cataloging the differences between them. Armando was six inches taller, broad-shouldered and handsome underneath the mask.

But damn, it was a dumb fucking suit. Like. Just let him get his hands on it, okay.

He had the build of an athlete, the athlete Cisco had never managed to be. He was powerful and dangerous and all the things Cisco had never managed on his best days.

Until Vibe.

* * *

When they squared off again, Rupture said, "So now you know."

"Now I know," Cisco said. "And it doesn't make any difference."

Lie. It made every kind of difference. There was just one difference it didn't make.

"Gonna fight me, little brother?" Rupture said.

"You're not my brother. I don't know you. I've never known you." He flexed his fingers and gathered a little egg of sound into his palms. "But yeah, I'm gonna fight you."

As lightning crackled in his ears, he thought, _Maybe this time I'll finally measure up._

FINIS


End file.
